Monthly Archives: March 2010

Holistic SEO: An Integrated Approach

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As Internet Marketers, we pay attention to every opportunity to capitalize on the changes made in the online industry to gain a competitive advantage over our competitors. SEO is undoubtedly always changing as innovations affect how content is discovered, indexed, and sorted in search results. In 2007, major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo have made some of the most significant changes ever by including images, maps, books, video, and news for certain search results.

Every marketer is forced to develop digital asset optimization strategies, while not forgetting about the basic search engine optimization components, for their clients through an integrated approach. Every approach must now include structured data in the form of microformats and rich snippets, as well as feeds and sitemaps, that all play an increasingly important role in uploading content for the Google index. Google says its mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

Because of this, it is now becoming absolutely essential that companies develop a plethora of digital assets that must include not only links and sitemaps, but a variety of real-time feeds from social media sites, videos, pictures, and blog posts. By developing these assets, marketers can deploy a better more holistic SEO strategy, which realizes the benefit of inclusion and visibility where customers are looking.

Many search marketers already optimize holistically under the premise of, “What can be searched on can be optimized.” Until recently, most companies avoided entering the content marketing business. SEO consultants have typically been left to deal with whatever content they could to optimize and promote for link building.
In essence, the weight given to content optimization versus digital asset optimization should clearly match the opportunities presented by an ever-changing search results page.

As long as there are search engines, there will be some kind of optimization for improving search engine visibility for your clients! What companies need to consider are all the digital assets they have to work with to give both search engines and customers the information they’re looking for in the formats they’ll respond to. Stay competitive and offer what assets you have against your competitors!

Information Provided By: Lee Odden, ClickZ
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

“Smart” Phone Users Trust Carriers The Most

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There is no question that mobile devices are becoming the next trend for marketers to reach their consumers. Marketing via mobile devices allow companies to reach their target markets anywhere and at anytime! There is an estimated 650 million people worldwide who use “smart” phones to access the Internet monthly and a recent study shows just who these users trust with regards to their services.

According to a Tellabs survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, two-thirds of mobile users around the globe are interested in “smart” services that would feed them information based on personal preferences, location, time of day and social setting.

Looking at the graph provided here, mobile users place a significant amount of trust in their mobile carriers in terms of protecting their information and actions on their phones. They also overwhelmingly selected their mobile carriers as the “most appropriate” provider of services for their devices like phone service, Internet accessibility, and applications.

Within the survey, consumers preferred to find their news, media, and entertainment content provided by their mobile carriers, then followed by other web providers, and then a combination of the two.

When it came to shopping services, however, there was a notable difference: Mobile carriers dropped somewhat in importance, and advertisers became a much more prominent source of information.

US marketers have already begun experimenting with exactly this type of smart shopping service. “Geo-fencing” of “Geolocation apps” provide personalized marketing messages to shoppers based on their location or proximity to a marketer’s store. A recent experiment from a store called 1020 Placecast, piloted a ShopAlerts program that was embraced by mobile users:

* 60% said the location-triggered messages were “cool” and “innovative.”
* 79% claimed to be more likely to visit a store.
* 65% made a purchase.
* 73% were likely to use the service again.

As technology continues to become more innovative and creative, we will soon be living in a world where you cannot escape the annoyances of advertising. Soon enough, we will have ads sent to our phones in correspondence to our physical location and time of day! This is very exciting yet horrifying but I am excited to see what the latest technological advances can do for companies that can benefit consumers.

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

What causes consumers to search online?

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The one thing that makes social media marketing so attractive lies in four words: word-of-mouth marketing. This is one of the most effective and credible forms of marketing a product or service and is the reason why so many companies feel the need to have a presence on many social networking sites. However, these social media users prefer a different type of interaction to help them inspire or prompt an online search…

According to a recent survey, conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA), they found that in-person, face-to-face communication was a social media users’ top reason to start an online search for a specific product or service.

The study revealed that social media users were even more influenced by face-to-face word-of-mouth than an average adult’ opinion found online.

This preference of face-to-face communication held across all age groups within the survey, and the only difference among any age group was that 18- to 34-year-olds were more likely to search online because of something they had seen on cable television, which was a smaller force among older users.

The study also demonstrated that online communities, such as MySpace and Facebook, influenced less than one-quarter of social media users to search for a product or service which is still a notable percentage. When it came to gender differences, men were marginally more likely than women to report such an influence from a social networking site and age had an even larger effect. Among the 18-to-34 group, nearly three in 10 searched because of social networks, compared with less than 20% of 35- to 54-year-olds and 15.3% of those 55 and older.

More than 71% of the respondents communicated about a service, product or brand in person after an online search, compared with only 21.6% who spread the word via sites such as MySpace or Facebook. Not all digital communication was shunned, however; about one-half used e-mail to tell others what they had found.

Social media users are particularly attractive to marketers because they are more likely to both look for and give purchase advice than the general population. Word-of-moth marketing continues to be one of the most valuable marketing tools available to companies so they should be focusing a lot, but not all of, of time in the online arena, especially in social media.

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Local Online Ad Buys on the Rise

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The state of the economy in 2009 forced changes to the local ad market. This has caused BIA/Kelsey, a large media strategies group, to lower expectations for local advertising spending, pushing the recovery curve out one year further than previously forecast.

Last year, according to the firm’s “Annual US Local Media Forecast,” US local ad spending reached $130.2 billion, or 55.3% of the total. That was lower than what BIA/Kelsey projected in February 2009 forecasting $141.3 billion and a significant drop from the $156.3 billion spend on local advertising in 2008.

BIA/Kelsey believes that the total local advertising spending will continue to stagnate through 2011, while 2012 will bring more “meaningful recovery” to the ad market.

Some important points to be noted within this study suggest that:
• Buys Online will continue to get a larger share of the local ad spending pie with increases from 12% in 2009 to a projected 14% in 2010.
• By 2014, BIA/Kelsey expects one-quarter of all local advertising spending to be online!
• In January, Barclays Capital also reported 2009 local ad spending down significantly from the year before, by about 22%. Barclays similarly expects a flat local ad market through 2011.

Here are some graphs to show details concerning the ad market in 2010:

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders

Small Businesses Turn to Cheaper Marketing Methods in Down Economy

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Due to the current state of the economy, many companies are now turning to more affordable methods of advertising their services as well as making sales. Small businesses have turned to social media and internet advertising because it is a cheaper alternative to traditional marketing methods. According to “The State of Small Business Report” from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland School of Business, the use of social media by small businesses has significantly increased to 24%, from 12% the year before.

The report also mentioned the most popular reasons for engaging in social media use. The leading answer was to provide their company a presence online for both their workers and their consumers, where the second most common answer was to update their statuses regarding the company and their products/services.
Here is a graph that shows the rest of the motives for using social media for small businesses:

It was also found that many businesses feel that social media use was not fulfilling their expectations; rather, social media’s capabilities for staying engaged with consumers and collaborating with other businesses were more in line with businesses’ expectations.

Also according to the report regarding small business and their social media use:

• Most small businesses say they are just breaking even with their current usage of social media, but a solid one-fifth find it profitable already.
• Nearly one-half believe it will make them money in the next 12 months, and another 39% think they will break even on it.
• Just 9% think social marketing will continue to be a losing proposition.
• Overall, 58% of respondents felt social media lived up to their expectations.
• One-half felt it took up more time than they realized, but only 6% claimed negative comments on social media had hurt their business.

A final statement was added about the report from Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service, who made a comment about how social media was letting small businesses become more competitive with larger competitors, “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.”

Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders